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CHAPTER SIX
THE ROMANCES
Pericles, Cymbeline,
The Winter's Tale and The Tempest
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- - - I - - -
Shakespeare's romances form a closely related group of plays, set apart by certain distinctive features which they hold in common, but nevertheless having sufficient affinity with the earlier comedies to allow us to see them as a natural progression in the playwright's development. 6.1 Like All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, the romances deal with serious themes which cast a deep shadow over the lighter, comic aspects of the plays; but the romances, although they approach tragedy much more closely than earlier comedies, have unequivocally happy endings. Quiller-Couch sees this as 'by far the most important point of likeness in these later plays ... they all deal with human reconcilement'. 6.2 Dowden had noted this earlier: 'The dissonance must be resolved into a harmony, clear and rapturous, or solemn and profound'; 6.3 he saw this resolution as 'not a mere stage necessity, or a necessity of composition', but as 'a moral necessity', 6.4 thus attributing to Shakespeare some higher purpose in writing the romances - to show the ordering of a moral world. The presentation of the disorder, conflict and violence which precede reconciliation forms a central concern of the romances, and that the closing harmony should be the more remarkable, the intensity with which chaos and evil are depicted far exceeds that in earlier comedies. This results in an important innovation in the romances: their concern with the supernatural is fundamentally different from their predecessors. Whereas the heroes and heroines of romantic comedy control their own destinies by their actions, the figures in the romances are often at the mercy of the gods, and it is only with divine or other supernatural help that harmonious conclusions can be reached. Another point of common ground in the romances is the fact that their plots concern not just the younger generation, involved in falling in love and marrying, but also the older generation, the parents, who are more than merely the figures of control and opposition found in the romantic comedies, but are actively involved in the overall process of regeneration depicted in the plays. As Hoeniger says, this gives rise to 'a peculiar kind of double plot which is found nowhere else in Shakespeare, and hardly anywhere else in Elizabethan drama': 6.5 parents and children are featured in distinct, but closely interwoven, strands of plot.
It is generally agreed that the first of the romances, Pericles, is not entirely by Shakespeare: he is thought to have written only small
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parts of the first two acts, but to be the sole author of the remainder of the play - or, by the more cautious, almost all of it. 6.6 Because of Shakespeare's part in it, the play provides a valuable insight to the problems he encountered when first tackling the writing of a romance, thus shedding light on similar aspects of the later plays. What is most disturbing about Pericles is its lack of dramatic cohesion: the fact that all the episodes presented in the first two acts concern the central figure, Pericles, does not prevent their appearing disjointed on the stage. Barber's reference to the 'seemingly random adventures' does not help either:
On deeper levels, the final happy ending is earned by moving through a sequence of attitudes which have a spiritual and psychological logic and make the seemingly random adventures a visionary exploration. 6.7
As we are moved from one locale to another, jumping irregularly forward in time, there is insufficient attention to the relating of the 'spiritual and psychological logic' of one episode to the next, and the cause of the problem is Shakespeare's treatment of time and place in the play. The romances all entail the presentation of events spanning many years, and in each play Shakespeare adopts a different technique to achieve this: in Pericles a Chorus announces the passage of time and related pertinent events, sometimes assisted by a dumb show. Despite the presence of unifying themes in the various episodes, there is no convincing link to provide continuity, and Hoeniger has gone as far as to state that 'in Pericles, dramatic irony is used sparingly and, what is even more peculiar, there is no central conflict'. 6.8 In every one of the earlier comedies we are presented with at least one clearly defined conflict, which continues to develop and deepen until it is finally resolved in the denouement; the central conflict often has many ramifications, and related subsidiary conflicts add to the interest and dramatic tension.
In Pericles the central conflict is so fundamental as almost to escape notice, and the many lesser conflicts throughout the play are not related to it in any direct of specific way. Our attention is focused on a hostile and disordered world, with man pitted against the primordial forces - the gods, Nature and the Fates:
In Pericles his Queene and Daughter seene,
Although assayl'de with Fortune fierce and keene,
Vertue preferd from fell destructions blast,
Lead on by heauen, and crown'd with ioy at last.
(Epilogue: 3-6) 6.9
Pericles is depicted from the outset as a virtuous man, submitting to the trials of the gods, caring and helpful towards his fellow men in need, and firmly resisting the forces of evil. Throughout the play runs a firm belief that good deeds will be rewarded, and evil punished - as prophetically implied by the evil Cleon in his welcome to Pericles: 'The Curse of heauen and men succeed their euils' (I.iv.104). It is this belief that must sustain Pericles in his harshest trials, such as his being cast ashore in the first sea tempest:
Yet cease your ire you angry Starres of heauen,
Wind, Raine, and Thunder, remember earthly man
Is but a substaunce that must yeeld to you:
And I (as fits my nature) do obey you.
(II.i.1-4)
In a similar vein he can comment on his loss of Thaisa:
We cannot but obey
the powers aboue vs; Could I rage and rore
as doth the sea she lies in, Yet the end
must be as tis .....
(III.iii.9-12)
The way tempests at sea are used in Pericles recalls the similar use in The Comedy of Errors, and more importantly, in Twelfth Night, while it anticipates that in The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. In each case both birth and death, regeneration and decay, are associated with the sea imagery, and so it is fitting that the sea should bring Pericles to Pentapolis where he meets Thaisa. Though hostile in appearance, the sea is finally benevolent: Marina is born at sea, and Thaisa dies and is buried at sea; it is at sea on board his ship that Pericles and Marina meet again, and are, in a sense, reborn. The association of the sea and its tempests with birth and death links it on a more fundamental level with the primordial forces in conflict with Pericles: the sea is presided over by Neptune (III.Ch.45), and it is the gods, therefore, that are directly responsible for the miseries suffered by Pericles, Thaisa and Marina, just as they are responsible for the giving and taking of life in birth and death.
Sea tempests must also be seen as symptoms of a disordered world, and as such they fit in well with the many other images of disorder in the play, the most powerful of which are sexual in origin. Pitcher
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identifies incest as a unifying theme in Pericles, 6.10 extending the idea from its initial presentation in Antioch, to Simonides and Thaisa in Pentapolis, and even Pericles and Marina in Mytilene. I find the argument unconvincing: the only obvious occurrence of incest is in the opening scene, where it serves as a violent image of disorder, shunned by the virtuous Pericles. Some critics find sexual perversion in Pericles' actions during this episode: Barker suggests that the world of Pentapolis is the source of Pericles' suffering, which is 'an act of penance for the "golden fruit" he desired to taste'. 6.11 Cutts is even more explicit, seeing Pericles as actually sinning in his lust for Antiochus' daughter, thus initiating the discord and suffering which punish him until he is finally restored to his 'kingly responsibilities' a chastened man. 6.12 Although such an interpretation fits the pattern seen in the other romances, where we find a move during the play from a sinful, disordered world, through suffering, to a renewed, ordered state at the conclusion, 6.13 Pericles should not be viewed as the source of disorder. Cutts' reading assumes that he went to Antioch with the intention of participating in the evil there, 6.14 but the evidence for this in the play is slight. Antiochus' incest with his daughter is typical of the disordered world in which Pericles and his family struggle for order and the happiness that goes with it. In journeying to Antioch Pericles had hoped to marry, thus establishing for himself the basis of his future happiness, ordering his life according to the accepted mores of society. The perversion he unexpectedly discovers there is aptly reflected in the violent forfeits paid by those who do not solve the riddle; and even worse, as Pericles discovers, those who do provide the solution are also killed. The introduction of such extreme violence and depravity at the outset creates for the audience the atmosphere of insecurity and the potential for disruption found in the world of the play. Pericles escapes the fate of summary beheading meted out to previous suitors by fleeing, but the effects of the serious disorder he had uncovered allow him no peace: Antiochus proposes to go to war with him. This would result in a heightening of disorder, but Pericles prefers exile to the prospect of seeing his own country in chaos.
This brings him to the court of Cleon and Dionyza in Tharsus, where further disorder is encountered: famine turns the whole concept of the fertility of marriage upside down, since not only do husbands and wives debate who should die first to maintain the life of the other, but their very offspring are at risk:
Those mothers who to nouzell vp their babes,
Thought nought too curious, are readie now
To eat those little darlings whom thy lou'de.
(I.iv.42-44)
The incest at Antioch, with its associated destruction of young men seeking marriage, is a repulsive perversion of the natural sexual function, the perpetuation of life. The cannibalism at Tharsus is a similar disordering of Nature, in which naturally productive marriage partners not only eat each other, but consume their own children as well. The play has moved from one state of disorder to another. While Pericles was compelled to flee the incest he found in Antioch to save his life, he now restores order to Tharsus by supplying food, and is prepared to face the responsibility he bears as a leader, having learnt that evil is not conquered by flight. In both of these episodes Pericles has proved himself a virtuous man, shunning disorder; but in the imperfect and disordered world of the play, virtue is not necessarily rewarded with happiness, although the Chorus implies that all is working towards a happy conclusion:
I'le shew you those in troubles raigne;
Loosing a Mite, a Mountaine gaine.
(II.Ch.7-8)
This prepares us for the first sea tempest, not only an image of a disordered world, but also a benign agent of reparation: by surviving the storm, Pericles is brought to Thaisa, whom he wins when he vanquishes her other suitors in the tournament. The storm marks a significant change in Pericles' life, and it is seen by both Gower (II.Ch.37-38) and Pericles himself as being sent by the gods, to whom he submits. It is Pericles' baptism into a new, productive phase of his life, and the sea, regenerative despite its stormy appearance, provides the armour which he will use in winning Thaisa. When he passes into the lists, we see
... his Present is
A withered Branch, that's onely greene at top,
The motto: In hac spe viuo.
(I.ii.41-43)
The 'withered Branch' of Pericles' past life has sprouted 'greene at top', prefiguring the fertility of his marriage, the hope in which he lives. This newly-won order and harmony is given apt expression in the two dances which follow the tournament (II.iii.98 and 106), and the music
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Pericles performs:
... I am behoulding to you
For your sweete Musicke this last night: I do
protest, my eares were neuer better fedde
With such delightfull pleasing harmonie.
(II.v.25-28)
Simonides takes pleasure in his gulling of Pericles, and with the general atmosphere of hope and order imparted by the dances and reference to music, the audience enjoys a respite from the emotional stress of the play's opening: the pretence at anger, the mock conflict and the threatened violence add dramatic interest to the wooing of Thaisa.
The happiness won through the first tempest is destroyed in the second, which evokes some of the finest poetry in the play, as Pericles prepares to consign his dead wife to the sea:
A terrible Child-bed hast thou had (my deare,
No light, no fire, th' vnfriendly elements,
Forgot thee vtterly, nor haue I time
To giue thee hallowd to thy graue, but straight,
Must cast thee scarcly Coffind, in [the ooze],
Where for a monument vpon thy bones,
[And e'er] remayning lampes, the belching Whale,
And humming Water must orewelme thy corpes,
Lying with simple shels ....
(III.i.56-64) 6.15
The pathos in this speech is almost unbearable, enhanced by the fact that Pericles has just been presented with his newly born daughter; and here, unlike in the earlier tempest, there has been no reassurance from the Chorus that any good will come of this. Everything relates to present disorder - the inappropriate circumstances for childbirth; the 'vnfriendly elements'; the unconventional burial which must of necessity lack formal order and ceremony; and finally, the inhospitable 'belching Whale' and 'humming Water' to which Thaisa is given - but all melts into the beautiful image of the body 'Lying with simple shels', which looks forward to the sea change of Ariel's song in The Tempest. As in the later play, the sea is not simply a destructive force: the reduction of Thaisa to the level of 'simple shels', the parting of Pericles from his wife, is tragic; but the storm also brings with it new life when Marina is born.
The violence and disorder which accompanied Marina's birth continue in the next two episodes of her life which we are shown: she escapes from Leonine, assigned by Dionyza to murder her, only by being abducted by
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pirates who sell her to a brothel keeper in Mytilene. Shakespeare makes a point of relating the abduction to the circumstances of Marina's birth, for she recalls what she knows of the tempest just before the pirates take her; and Leonine prepares to 'sweare shees dead, | and throwne into the Sea' (IV.i.98-99), the same fate as Thaisa had met. Marina's life at Tharsus has reached the end of its productive phase and her violent removal to Mytilene is necessary if she is to achieve final happiness - she has to undergo a second baptism to experience the full blossoming of her sexuality, and this rite of passage is not only the pirates' abduction, associated with the sea, but also the attempt to reduce her to the level of a prostitute in the brothel.
The brothel scenes continue the idea of sexual disorder introduced at the outset in Antiochus' incest, and they owe much to both All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. Both Bertram and Lysimachus frequent brothels, but end up marrying women of great virtue who are responsible for putting an end to their sexual promiscuity. The Bawd, Pandar and Boult are reminiscent of Overdone and Pompey, but are more sinister figures, since they threaten to take Marina's virginity by force. Just as Pericles' conflict with Antiochus was based on sexual perversion, so Marina's with those in the brothel is based on sexual licence; and both conflicts serve to emphasise the moral qualities of the character resisting the sexual misconduct. Both Marina and Helena are successful in undergoing severe trials, thus proving their great virtue, and finally winning happiness. Instead of succumbing to the demands of her captors in the brothel, Marina influences her prospective clients, persuading them to lead clean and honest lives, and so she, like Pericles, stands for order in the play:
Shee sings like one immortall, and shee daunces
As Goddesse-like to her admired layes.
(V.Ch.3-4)
Here, singing and dancing are once again emblems of order and harmony, associated with the regenerative powers by which Marina is finally reunited with her father. This άναγνώρισις is the emotional climax of the play, marking Pericles' return from his latest state of dejected sterility to a more productive life. Yet again the passage from one phase of life to the next is marked by a sea storm, appropriate in this case to the devastation Pericles feels at the news of Marina's death. He isolates himself from the world, which no longer holds any interest for
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him: he both rejects and is rejected. His violent shunning of Marina is intensely ironical: 6.16 she could so easily leave him, and there is a hint of divine intervention in her aside:
I will desist,
but there is something glowes vpon my cheek,
and whispers in mine eare, go not till he speake.
(V.i.94-96)
Marina is tempted to leave Pericles in his misery, and if she did, the play would move inevitably towards a tragic ending, with the death of Pericles. The physical expression given by Pericles to his depression in pushing Marina away looks forward to a similar violent rejection in Cymbeline, when Posthumus, seeking only to die, strikes the unrecognised Imogen who is offering him life. Similarly, Pericles' action is a rejection of the life Marina stands for and offers him: her 'sweet harmonie' (V.i.44) and her coming from 'the leauie shelter' (V.i.50) both point to her regenerative functions, her ability to restore order and the fertility of Nature.
The tension gradually subsides as the stories of father and daughter slowly unfold, and the harmony, presaged in Marina's song at line 79, materialises in the celestial music of the spheres, which only Pericles can hear, signifying that he is once again in harmony with Nature and redeemed from his earlier suffering. 6.17 After this it remains only for Thaisa to be reunited with her husband and daughter, but this does not take place without the assistance of Diana. The final scene is an anti-climax: it completes the state of harmony and fertility towards which the action has been progressing, but the theophany of Diana anticipates the discovery of Thaisa, and this, together with the great emotional force of the reunion scene between Pericles and Marina, robs it of its impact. The handling of the two recognition scenes in Pericles may be compared with those found in The Winter's Tale, where Shakespeare carefully avoids repeating the error of showing his audience the first scene and so diminishing the power of the second. Perdita's reunion with her father is merely reported, while the emotional climax of the play comes at the remarkable resurrection of Hermione in the final scene. In Pericles, however, there is a greater emphasis on the divine, perhaps in an attempt to enhance the emotional intensity in the ending. Thaisa's role as priestess to Diana recalls that of Emilia in The Comedy of Errors, but here Diana herself has arranged the reunion, as Pericles acknowledges:
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... you gods, your present kindenes
makes my past miseries sports ....
(V.iii.40-41)
The repeated emphasis on submission to the wills of the gods throughout the action, and their harsh treatment of Pericles and his family, recalls the sentiments expressed by the blinded Gloucester in King Lear:
As Flies to wanton Boyes, are we to th' Gods,
They kill vs for their sport.
(Lear IV.i.36-37)
In Pericles, however, the gods are ultimately merciful, rewarding virtue with happiness, even in a hostile, disordered world.
I have dealt rather briefly with Pericles. Its importance in the Shakespearean canon cannot be denied: it was published under his name three times in quarto editions during his lifetime, and again in 1619, before the publication of the first folio collection in 1623, from which it was omitted. 6.18 The quartos testify to its great popularity, while the Folio omission may possibly be ascribed to its mixed authorship. Despite its popularity with Jacobean audiences its choral treatment of time and place results in a lack of cohesion; this, coupled with its doubtful authorship in the first two acts, often leads to its exclusion from studies of the romances. However, I have included it largely because it provides a link between the dark comedies and the more generally accepted Shakespearean romances, showing, as it does, the playwright experimenting with a new type of play which he brought to perfection in The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.
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- - - NOTES: CHAPTER SIX - - -
6.1 See William Shakespeare, Pericles, ed. F.D. Hoeniger (London: Methuen, 1979), pp.lxxi-lxxiv; Pafford, p.1; Quiller-Couch, Workmanship, pp.221-240; Wilson Knight, Crown, pp.9-31. return
6.2 Quiller-Couch, Workmanship, p.239. return
6.6 Chambers, pp.277-285; Quiller-Couch, pp.246-251; Wilson Knight, Crown, pp.74-75; Hoeniger, pp.lii-lvi. return
6.7 Cesar Lombardi Barber, '"Thou that beget'st him that did thee beget": Transformation
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in Pericles and The Winter's Tale', Shakespeare Survey, 22 (1969), 63. return
6.9 The line numbers are taken from the edition by Hoeniger, cited above; all quotations are from the 1609 Quarto. return
6.10 John Pitcher, 'The Poet and Taboo: The Riddle of Shakespeare's Pericles', Essays and Studies, 33 (1982), 14-29. return
6.11 Gerard A. Barker, 'Themes and Variations in Shakespeare's Pericles', English Studies, 44 (1963), 413. return
6.12 J.P. Cutts, 'Pericles' "Downright violence"', Shakespeare Studies, 4 (1969), 277-278. return
6.13 This pattern is not found exclusively in the romances, but it is expressed with peculiar clarity in these plays. return
6.15 Quarto has 'oare' in line 60; the emendation is Steevens' - see Hoeniger, p.82 n. and col. In line 62 Quarto's 'The ayre' has been variously emended, but may remain if 'ayre' is taken to be the compositor's spelling of 'e'er': see Hoeniger, p.83 n. and col. return
6.16 There is no stage direction for violence, but it can be deduced from Marina's saying, 'you would not do me violence' (V.i.100), and from Pericles' words a little later, 'when I did push thee backe' (V.i.126). See Hoeniger, p.143 n. return
6.17 The aspect of redemption was pointed out to me by Professor Ferguson. return
6.18 Hoeniger, pp.xxxix-xl; further quartos followed in 1630 and 1635, but derive from the first quarto of 1609. return
Proceed to Cymbeline